This blog follows the history of psychiatry

Psychiatry’s Identity Crisis

American psychiatry is facing an identity crisis, writes Cornell psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman in a New York Times opinion piece published this week:

AMERICAN psychiatry is facing a quandary: Despite a vast investment in basic neuroscience research and its rich intellectual promise, we have little to show for it on the treatment front.

With few exceptions, every major class of current psychotropic drugs — antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety medications — basically targets the same receptors and neurotransmitters in the brain as did their precursors, which were developed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Sure, the newer drugs are generally safer and more tolerable than the older ones, but they are no more effective.